It has been a busy time for me with some excited change. I started working for a practice in Kent, Washington State and have recently moved to my new place. Now I am writing this from Irvine, California since my company sent me here for a week for some training. There has been lots of moving parts making me being quiet for some time. I miss DDS Journey. There are so many things I want to share with you all as I keep having new topics adding to my list.
Welcome gift from my boss. So thoughtful of him!
Recently I have got lots of questions about getting license to practice in USA. One question I had was “I am sending my transcript to ECE for evaluation, will I be able to practice after that?” I realized that this whole journey is still very confusing to most of you, and if you do not know the big picture, it won’t work no matter how many details I give out. I was just like that 5 years ago. Super confused. So here I will attempt to break down the journey to the core, hopefully it will make it easier for you guys to follow DDS Journey in the future.
Degree vs license.
Degree is the one you get after you finish dental school – both CODA-accredited and non-CODA-accredited schools. CODA is an organization accredits dental schools and dental programs. In general, CODA-accredited schools include only schools in the USA and Canada. Other dental schools – the ones you and I graduated from – are non-CODA-accredited. License is a totally different thing. One can have a degree yet not a license to practice. License is determined by each state. In general, after a dentist gets his/her degree, they have to apply to the state they want to practice to get the license. Then the state will decide if they are qualified for a license or not. Each state has different sets of requirements that one has to fulfil. This is not a secret information. They always have these requirements on their website. There is no way I know the requirements for all 50 states since I haven’t considered working anywhere except Washington State and Colorado. When my classmates and I were about to graduate, the school made it pretty clear that it’s our job to contact/call/email the state’s board directly to find out what we need to take in order to have the license.
With that in mind, if you know early on which state you want to practice in the future, keep checking their website. Simply googling “State WA/CO/CA/NY etc, dental license requirements” or some similar keywords should get you there. Although each state requires different material to grant a license, there is some key requirements that ALL state needs
1) Passing NBDE Part 1/2/ INBDE (theory test)
2) Having DDS/DMD degree from a CODA-accredited schools (aka US/CA schools)
3) Passing board exams (clinical test)
Other requirements can be finishing HIV course, passing ethical exam, paying fee, submitting personal bio and so on.
Passing NBDE Part 1/2/INBDE
I recently wrote a post about this topic. If you are interested in learning the difference between NBDE vs INBDE, click this link. In order to apply for the test, you will have to go through several steps such as signing up as member with ADA, sending your ECE evaluation to them, paying fee, etc. The purpose is to verify that you are really a dentist in your home country before allowing you to take the exams. This is the first stage in the US DDS Journey in order to apply for Advance Standing Programs with a US dental school and also to apply for license after you graduate from there.
Having DDS/DMD degree from a CODA-accredited schools
So, to the follower asking me about license after ECE evaluation, this is the answer for her question. Unfortunately, no as you have to graduate from a CODA-accredited school to apply for license. This is why there are Advance Standing Programs in some dental schools for international dentists like us to graduate one more time but from a CODA-acc school. Is it an absolute NO? Nope. There is always exemption. The information below was screen-shotted from Washington State Department of Health’s website (read carefully the “non-accredited dental schools” part) So it’s safe to say that you should check with your state’s requirements early on and then once a year for any change.
Passing board exams
There are several regional board exams in the U.S. Regional boards are different and independent from dental schools or state. The most popular ones are WREB, CRDTS, ADEX, OSCE, etc. Each of them held exams every 1-2 months in different schools and each schools also held different board exams throughout a year. In Colorado we have CRDTS and WREB. If any student needs to pass other regional board like ADEX, he/she will fly out to another school where they have that board exam. Schools are hosting these board exams only, they do not determine who pass and who not. State also do not interfere on the result. State only decide on which board exams they prefer. This picture below is from ADA. Please check with your state because there are always changes each year.
In short, if you want to apply for license at the state you want to live/practice, you have to check with them either from website or through mail/phone. That is the end goal of our journey. I hope this post will clear up some confusion you have right now. Please don’t hesitate to ask me any question as even the simplest question can lead to a new topic and will help others as well. DDS Journey will not contribute much without your feedback and questions.